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A young man eyes you sidelong as you enter. There is something warily watchful, even wilfully impenetrable, about his tight-lipped appraisal. He looks as if he is conscious of the challenge that he sets.
No one knows who he is. Nor are they sure if this, the so-called Giustiniani Portrait (named after its earliest documented owners), should be attributed to the hand of the elusive artist Giorgione, or that of his contemporary Titian. And clearly the young man is not going to tell you. He gazes inscrutably from beyond his trompe-l’oeil parapet: a reminder that, however rich and revelatory, the Royal Academy’s latest show is also full of mystery.
The scene is the Republic of Venice at the start of the 16th century. Bellini is the era’s greatest painter. But a new generation is rising, among them the man who has been dubbed the Scarlet Pimpernel of painting: Giorgio da Castelfranco, aka Giorgione.
In the Age of Giorgioneis all about questions. Because it seeks to open out and then probe possibilities rather than pin down perceptions, it doubles as a detective story in which the visitor is invited to play a part.
You probably know his most famous painting, The Tempest. It shows a young woman nursing her newborn at the side of a road. Behind is a walled city, above which the thunderstorm from which the picture takes its title breaks. A dashing young man poses jauntily in the foreground. Who is he? Who is she? What is their story? The facts have been tantalising scholars for 500 years. And the same can be said of its enigmatic creator, about whose life precious little is known except the date of his death (in 1510, most likely from plague, at the age of about 33).
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Yet Giorgione is the artist who transformed Venetian painting, ushering in a golden era that lies at the heart of high culture. Combining the soft-edged modelling of the Florentine Leonardo with the sharply naturalistic scrutiny of the German Albrecht Dürer, he shaped a new way of seeing. The vaporous colours and the sensuous atmospheres, the poetic moods and psychological depths that we now associate with the Venetian Renaissance came about in large part because of Giorgione.
Rather than attempting a factual monograph, the experimental exhibition offers a hall of mirrors instead. It seeks fleeting reflections of an all-but phantasmagoric master in the works of the many followers who were influenced by him. Among these are not only some of the greatest names of the era — Titian, Lorenzo Lotto and Sebastiano del Piombo — but also little-known figures such as Giovanni Cariani, who will prove an exciting new discovery for many.
The Royal Academy has attracted some amazing loans, including more than a third of the 40 odd paintings that are (often controversially) attributed to Giorgione. For the broader public his portrait image of an impoverished old woman (from the Accademia in Venice) will stand out. A handful of works by Titian, that most seductive of masters, also stand out. For the connoisseur, an assembly of canvases all of which, at some point or other, have been attributed to Giorgione is a curatorial tour de force.
Visitors, having followed the complexities of the plot, are invited to go online and make public their deductions: is the Giustiniani Portrait by Giorgione or Titian? Does it really matter? Does the value of a painting depend only on a celebrity tag?
Royal Academy, W1 (020 7300 8090), from March 12 to June 5